Another "Tale of two cities" blog

   

      Two news stories this week seemed to once again highlight the difference of the 15 miles  between Columbia and Baltimore.  The website WalletHub listed Columbia as the safest city among the 181 cities it looked at in the United States.  The criteria was based on factors of crime, natural disasters and financial health.  This may be a little surprising to many of us who have the perception that there has been an increase in crime as Columbia has grown.  While most of us have not experience any direct crime we do read the crime log in the local paper and see that crime is certainly a part of our growing city.
     The second news story is the stabbing of a woman in Baltimore who had stopped to give a supposed homeless mother some money.  This new story has gained national attention and even received a comment from Oprah.  The national exposure of stories like this has turned Baltimore into a city with a national perception of a failed city.  When you go to Baltimore it seems that you have some areas on its borders like Port Covinton, Harbor East, the stadiums and the Inner Harbor that bring people into Baltimore but once you get past these areas you see blight, abandoned homes and a "hallowed" out core to much of the rest of the City.
     While there are a number of factors that create this reality of cities 15 miles apart going in different directions the most significant one is the job picture in both areas.  While we see new office buildings going up in the Crescent development in Columbia bringing high paying white collar jobs here we see the disappearance of good paying blue collar jobs from Baltimore.   The good paying union jobs at Bethlehem Steel and General Motors has been replaced by lower paying non union jobs at the Amazon distribution center.  The future of cities like Columbia that are primarily home to white collar jobs have a bright future while cities like Baltimore that have a blue collar past will continue to decline as our Country moves into a service economy and away from a manufacturing economy.  And Trump is "blowing smoke" when he talks about bring back manufacturing jobs to the US.  He is taking a lot of gullible people with him on that ride.

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